GreyBadger
Standard Member
- Joined
- May 5, 2006
- Messages
- 12
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 30
Hi all
Here’s a silly situation. I have up to 2.5k in my pocket for a gaming pc.... and I can’t spend it! Perhaps I’d better expand on that a little. (might be best you get a cup of tea and a digestive, before reading on.)
Waaaay back in the mists of time, our first PC, a 486 monster, came from “Special Reserve“ in Chelmsford and was great. We knew nothing about PC’s. We had a friend with a 286 who came along to help us choose and our only buying criteria was that our new machine should be able to run Doom (yes,the original) and TFX, better than his did. We stood for about twenty minutes watching the two perform, while the salesman fidgeted impatiently, before giving it the thumbs up and proudly going home with our new machine. which as It turned out would be the start for me of a lifelong love of PC gaming. Of course it was also my first lesson in how fickle the technology was, as a very short time later Pentium was released. But we’ll gloss over that. Point is, I had that machine for a long while and while buying blind could have been a disaster, fate smiled on us, it was a great little machine and I loved it.
All good things though, etc and eventually it was time to retire our friend (the pc... not the chap who helped us choose.) for something newer and shinier. Overconfident because of our last success and now knowing slightly more about what we wanted. We bought a new machine from a company, in Luton this time and it turned out to be a HUGE mistake! The machine wouldn’t run when we got home, which meant we had to go back to sort it, which meant waiting till after the weekend (because of course it did.) Then when it actually did run, it performed disappointingly and was really loud. On top of that it didn’t have all the components we’d asked for and on querying it we were told in no uncertain terms that they’d never agreed to the spec we wanted, so basically we were lying. Needless to say we went straight for the refund and after a short battle ending with us asking for their full details for our solicitor, they stumped up the money and we kicked the dust off our shoes as we left.
Interestingly enough, a while later we ended up chatting with an ex employee of theirs and it turned out they’d left this supposedly reputable company after only a few months, because their practices were so shoddy. But needless to say, the whole experience left a really bad taste in our mouths and made us very wary about where we bought from.
In the end our next PC was a hand me down from that same friend who helped us choose the original. He’d recently upgraded and was happy for a bit of a cash injection toward that. We were happy because obviously we knew him and we knew the machine we were getting.
That PC lasted us a long time and saw us move to Lincolnshire, where we were Lucky enough to find a really great independent PC repair shop, (not the norm sadly.) who looked after us and that machine through a number of upgrades and when eventually it was time for a new one, he helped us make a list of what we wanted (because we’ve never become really pc literate) and he built it for us.
So as you can see. All in all, apart from that one blip, we’ve been really lucky in our PC history. But that was a while ago now and we haven’t had a viable gaming PC for a few years, or the money for a new one. Well that situation just changed and I have effectively a one off opportunity to spend this huge (to me anyway) amount of dosh on a new gaming PC. But our PC guy retired a few years back and we have no other PC contacts anymore. And in case you’ve not been able to read between the lines, building one myself is simply not an option. (Although I do know I want a 2080 Invidia graphics card and 32 ram.)
All of which leaves us back to buying from a large company again, but absolutely no clue who we can trust. We’ve looked at a few of the names you seem to hear the most, but then every time we check, we find customer service horror stories and of course there are always going to be some of those.... but still. Every time that happens, we get a cold flash back to that terrible company in Luton.
Last week we even got as far as having an order in the basket of one well known company... but then a glitch on the credit card meant we had to delay to sort it out and wouldn’t you know it, while we were sorting that out, we found a slew of bad customer reports we’d not found. Complaining about undisclosed refurbished parts and awful customer service. So we’ve not been back.
Anyway, there you go. Money in my pocket. Rough(Ish) idea of what I want. I mean for goodness sake, how hard can it be?
Badger.
Here’s a silly situation. I have up to 2.5k in my pocket for a gaming pc.... and I can’t spend it! Perhaps I’d better expand on that a little. (might be best you get a cup of tea and a digestive, before reading on.)
Waaaay back in the mists of time, our first PC, a 486 monster, came from “Special Reserve“ in Chelmsford and was great. We knew nothing about PC’s. We had a friend with a 286 who came along to help us choose and our only buying criteria was that our new machine should be able to run Doom (yes,the original) and TFX, better than his did. We stood for about twenty minutes watching the two perform, while the salesman fidgeted impatiently, before giving it the thumbs up and proudly going home with our new machine. which as It turned out would be the start for me of a lifelong love of PC gaming. Of course it was also my first lesson in how fickle the technology was, as a very short time later Pentium was released. But we’ll gloss over that. Point is, I had that machine for a long while and while buying blind could have been a disaster, fate smiled on us, it was a great little machine and I loved it.
All good things though, etc and eventually it was time to retire our friend (the pc... not the chap who helped us choose.) for something newer and shinier. Overconfident because of our last success and now knowing slightly more about what we wanted. We bought a new machine from a company, in Luton this time and it turned out to be a HUGE mistake! The machine wouldn’t run when we got home, which meant we had to go back to sort it, which meant waiting till after the weekend (because of course it did.) Then when it actually did run, it performed disappointingly and was really loud. On top of that it didn’t have all the components we’d asked for and on querying it we were told in no uncertain terms that they’d never agreed to the spec we wanted, so basically we were lying. Needless to say we went straight for the refund and after a short battle ending with us asking for their full details for our solicitor, they stumped up the money and we kicked the dust off our shoes as we left.
Interestingly enough, a while later we ended up chatting with an ex employee of theirs and it turned out they’d left this supposedly reputable company after only a few months, because their practices were so shoddy. But needless to say, the whole experience left a really bad taste in our mouths and made us very wary about where we bought from.
In the end our next PC was a hand me down from that same friend who helped us choose the original. He’d recently upgraded and was happy for a bit of a cash injection toward that. We were happy because obviously we knew him and we knew the machine we were getting.
That PC lasted us a long time and saw us move to Lincolnshire, where we were Lucky enough to find a really great independent PC repair shop, (not the norm sadly.) who looked after us and that machine through a number of upgrades and when eventually it was time for a new one, he helped us make a list of what we wanted (because we’ve never become really pc literate) and he built it for us.
So as you can see. All in all, apart from that one blip, we’ve been really lucky in our PC history. But that was a while ago now and we haven’t had a viable gaming PC for a few years, or the money for a new one. Well that situation just changed and I have effectively a one off opportunity to spend this huge (to me anyway) amount of dosh on a new gaming PC. But our PC guy retired a few years back and we have no other PC contacts anymore. And in case you’ve not been able to read between the lines, building one myself is simply not an option. (Although I do know I want a 2080 Invidia graphics card and 32 ram.)
All of which leaves us back to buying from a large company again, but absolutely no clue who we can trust. We’ve looked at a few of the names you seem to hear the most, but then every time we check, we find customer service horror stories and of course there are always going to be some of those.... but still. Every time that happens, we get a cold flash back to that terrible company in Luton.
Last week we even got as far as having an order in the basket of one well known company... but then a glitch on the credit card meant we had to delay to sort it out and wouldn’t you know it, while we were sorting that out, we found a slew of bad customer reports we’d not found. Complaining about undisclosed refurbished parts and awful customer service. So we’ve not been back.
Anyway, there you go. Money in my pocket. Rough(Ish) idea of what I want. I mean for goodness sake, how hard can it be?
Badger.